It’s an 8K, 120Hz television with full array local dimming (all the better to show off exactly what mini-LED is capable of). It’s positioned above the NanoCell LCDs that were previously the company’s most aspirational LCD TVs. LG’s mini-LED range – called ‘ QNED’ – has immediately become its premium LCD offering, combining mini-LED with quantum dot technology. The TCL X925 Mini LED 8K TV (Image credit: TCL) And if some TVs are found wanting when it comes to controlling a few dozen backlight dimming zones, can they really be expected to be any better when they have control of what could be thousands?Īpple's pursuing mini-LED for its 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2021, making for 600 nits of brightness, and its latest MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) will only raise awareness and hype for the technology too. There’s a lot of variation in the performance of similarly priced, similarly specified LED-backlit LCD screens - you only have to have a quick glance at our numerous TV reviews to see that. Of course, the success of mini-LED will come down to the way the technology is implemented. These theoretical advantages are pretty compelling.Īnd, of course, that’s without OLED’s perceived problems: LED/LCD technology has never been the subject of screen-burn scare stories, nor does it fall prey to the eventual but inevitable drop-off in performance that’s the price of the ‘organic’ element of OLED. If it’s deployed effectively, mini-LED backlighting should allow LCD panels to get much closer to OLED levels of performance than has been possible before. It should allow for better control, which ought to mean less backlight bleed and stronger contrasts. It means backlighting control can be more targeted and precise. Officially a diode no bigger than 0.2mm can be classed as ‘mini’ – but this is the consumer electronics industry we’re dealing with here, and you can expect the word ‘mini’ to be used quite loosely. The basic principle, though, is that smaller LED diodes allow for more LED diodes.įitting more, and smaller, LED diodes behind the LCD pixels means images can be brighter. Simply put, mini-LED is a more efficient and more effective way of backlighting an LCD screen. (Image credit: Samsung) What is mini-LED? However, there might still be a way for LCD technology to reassert itself among the best TVs – and that’s through mini-LED. But this kind of messy picture quality is what has increasingly made LCD technology look second class compared to its shiny OLED competitor. We know that no one ever bought a TV solely for how it handles the end credits of a film. The result is whatever should be black is now more of a cloudy grey. When you’re watching on an LCD TV, it’s normal to see a halo of light around the words, or to let its backlight show ‘bleed’ from the corners of the screen. There’s a black screen with white text scrolling up it. Blacks on an LCD screen don’t just lack the inky quality of their OLED equivalents, but if an LCD TV’s backlight is poorly implemented and controlled, there can be noticeable unevenness to the way the screen describes what should be uniform areas of black.Ī good example is if you imagine the end credits of most movies. How does this impact your viewing experience? It’s best to compare it to an LCD screen. Because of this extra layer of backlighting, the pixels in an LCD display can never be turned completely off. This is what creates the necessary brightness and color. LCD pixels can’t illuminate themselves – although OLED can – so they need a light source behind them that can shine light through. As you might guess from the name, mini-LED shrinks the LED modules that provide backlighting to LCD screens.
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